Eclair Lips Has Its Best Year Yet Thanks To New Brunswickers Buying Local
MONCTON — Covid-19 put major financial stress on many local retail businesses in New Brunswick, but one Moncton entrepreneur says 2020 will be her best year yet — all thanks to people’s commitment to buy local during the pandemic.
Before the province went into lockdown in March, about 80 percent of Eclair Lip’s business was through wholesale. The company, which makes natural lip balms, soaps and candles, was shipping to over 500 stores across North America.
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“We’ve been in business since 2015 and one of the things from the start that has been going well for us was the wholesale side of our business. We’ve constantly been doing really well on that side,” says Eclair Lips owner Sylvie Roy.
“We did alright with retail customers, but I would say a lot of our retail customers were local here in New Brunswick and most of our retail sales would happen around the holidays.”
Then March came around and so did Covid-19. Like many small businesses in New Brunswick, Roy saw her business drastically decline as the province declared a state of emergency and went into lockdown. To reduce costs, the company decided to move out of their commercial warehouse space and back into Roy’s basement, where Eclair lips first began.
With 80 percent of her business being wholesale, many of the companies Eclair Lips sold to also closed down, in some cases permanently. Business dropped by 50 percent.
“In March when everything hit, it felt that our bread and butter had been wholesale at the point because we were selling mostly to brick and mortar stores across Canada and the U.S. and they were the first ones impacted by shutdowns,” says Roy.”
“Here we were being faced with this reality that ‘oh yeah, you’re going to have to do something about this quick.'”
Like many other small businesses, Eclair Lips shifted its focus to growing its online sales to survive.
Focusing on online retail sales was something Roy planned on doing for a while, but before she did any major upgrades or promotions, something unexpected started to happen.
“Retail really started picking up,” says Roy. “People wanted to support local and I think it was kind of therapeutic to order things that made them feel good and have some mail come. A lot of people were sending our products as gifts to loved ones that missed or that they couldn’t see.”
The spike in the retail business was a welcomed surprise, but now operating out of her basement, Roy says they had to quickly adjust and ramp up their production.
“It was challenging too because we weren’t used to that volume of retail orders because wholesale is relatively more hands-off than retail in a lot of ways and we were seeing volumes like we never saw before,” says Roy.
“Even Chrismas is 2019 wasn’t as busy on the retail side as we were in April 2020. It was insane.”
Roy believes the spike in online order came from people want to support local during the pandemic. Many people were stuck at home with some extra cash to spare.
“I know across the board most of the entrepreneurs that I know locally and in the U.S., they were seeing the same thing,” she says. “I think there’s definitely a phenomenon that it was organic, that people wanted to buy things.”
Over the last several months, Eclair Lips has beefed up its website and email and social media marketing to build on its new retail growth. Business is now 50/50 split between retail and wholesale.
“Right now wholesale is actually incredibly busy which I am happy to see.”
In terms of revenue, the goal pre-pandemic was to make $175,000 this year as of now, the company is at $125,000. Roy is cautiously optimistic they will reach their goal.
“We’ll see,” says Roy. “It’s been a long shot on so many different levels and we’ve made it through, so I figured if there’s a time for optimism, why not now?”
But regardless if they reach that target, she says this will be the company’s best year ever, something that wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for New Brunswicker’s desire to shop local.
“I’m excited that we’ve reached a lot more customers in other parts of Canada and the U.S. We’re seeing more frequent orders outside of New Brunswick,” says Roy. “But by far and large, it’s the people in New Brunswick that are still are still a huge chunk of our customer base and we’re so grateful that they supported us.”